[meteorite-list] Look! Up in the sky! Search for meteorites leads to Lode

From: Darren Garrison <cynapse_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2007 12:18:58 -0400
Message-ID: <ur6ec359ji4i4nell1a8j0aces2ef417i9_at_4ax.com>

Let's just hope that nobody told the cop that he's "close to the retardation
point", because that could have ended badly.

http://www.modbee.com/local/story/45981.html

The Modesto Bee
Posted on Sat, Aug. 18, 2007
Look! Up in the sky! Search for meteorites leads to Lode
By CARRIE PEYTON DAHLBERG
THE SACRAMENTO BEE
last updated: August 18, 2007 02:35:22 AM

SONORA ? Robert Ward climbed out of his pickup and ambled toward four guys
gathered around the front porch of a Tuolumne City house.

"I'm researching a big meteor that blew up near here," he began.

Before he left a few minutes later, the guys knew how to contact him, that he'd
pay for meteorites, and that he wanted to meet with anyone who'd seen the
dazzling flare above Tuolumne County last weekend.

Ward had driven hard from Arizona lured by that fireball, a brilliant, booming
event that shook houses, awakened families and jangled telephones for sheriff's
dispatchers.

He was hunting treasure: ancient space rocks, newly fallen to Earth.

To call Ward's quest a long shot understates it.

Of the hundreds of meteors each year that flare brightly enough and break apart
loudly enough to prompt multiple calls to authorities, only a few worldwide lead
to meteorite finds, said University of Arkansas meteor expert Derek Sears.

On top of that, Ward's search had led him to country ranging from rolling,
oak-studded foothills to heavily forested Sierra peaks. A missing person's car
can languish undiscovered for months there, Tuolumne County Sheriff's Lt. Dan
Bressler said.

Ward hoped to narrow his search by persuading witnesses to stand with him
exactly where they saw the fireball, and show him its arc through the sky. He
took measurements with an azimuth compass and noted his position with a global
positioning system, gathering data to put into mapping software.

"I've talked with witnesses on three sides now, north of it, south of it and
east of it," he said late Thursday afternoon, on his first full day in
California.

Ward is among a growing cadre of meteorite collectors, a field that has boomed
with the Internet and improved hunting technologies.

"I've never been involved in a group that was so passionate and obsessive about
their hobby," said Geoffrey Notkin, an Arizonan who has bought, sold and
searched for meteorites for 15 years.

While many people devote occasional weekends to the hobby, a few make a living,
mostly traveling to known sites in deserts or ice fields strewn with meteorites
that fell long ago. They search there, using sophisticated metal detectors.

"The most successful hunters are bold and determined and willing to spend a lot
of time," Notkin said.

Ward, at 30, qualifies for at least two out of three. He describes himself as an
investor, who has meteorites on display in every room of his house in Prescott,
Ariz., and who rarely sells his finds.

Fireball 'lit up the entire sky'

The burst of light that drew Ward to Sonora was not the streak of a typical
falling star, but its much brighter cousin, called a fireball.

While not rare, a fireball "is so spectacular we are poorly calibrated to handle
it," said Sears, director of the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary
Sciences. People often remember the objects as closer, brighter and slower than
they really were.

Even among fireballs, this one stood out, said Robert Lunsford, operations
manager of the American Meteor Society, who keeps the society's fireball log.

"This is one of the top 10 events I've had since I began recording back in
2005," he said, because so many observers mentioned a delayed sonic boom.

Just after midnight on Aug. 11, it was seen from Fair Oaks to San Francisco to
Gilroy, and filmed by a Yuba City sky watcher, but the fireball made its most
dramatic appearance above Tuolumne County.

"We got reports from all ends of the county," Bressler said. "It was either
bright blue or bright green. It lit up the entire sky. It lit up Lake Melones so
somebody could see every boat on the lake. The houses shook."

'It was pretty wild'

Every deputy on patrol called in, 911 lines were flooded briefly, and over a
24-hour period, dispatchers handled 200 more calls than usual.

"It was pretty wild," said sheriff's Cpl. Kelly Dickson, who was driving home
when the sky above his truck lit up twice. "I saw the object explode up in the
sky; a couple of fragments that were still glowing split off. One was headed
east and the other was headed in a northerly direction."

From Dickson's description, Sears concluded the sheriff's officer probably was
close to the retardation point, where a speeding meteor hits denser atmosphere
like a rock slamming into a wall. The force shatters the rock along its cracks,
and whatever reaches the Earth's surface is called a meteorite. Often, consumed
by heat, nothing is left to fall.

Science still has "tons and tons" to learn from meteorites, Sears said. Although
they've been probed extensively in labs, "almost yearly something new turns up."
Some of the rarest meteorites come from the moon or Mars, and others from
comets, but most are believed to speed toward Earth from the asteroid belt,
where rocks owe their origin to the beginning of the solar system.

"You're holding a rock in your hand that's 4 billion years old, that formed when
we barely had an Earth," Sears said, adding that meteorites still give him goose
bumps. "There are sprinklings in there of dust from other star systems."
Received on Sat 18 Aug 2007 12:18:58 PM PDT